Each fall there are the annual leaf collection and disposal operations. Generally, in municipalities, the homeowner collects his leaves and lawn debris and deposits them at the street curb. From here, usually city employees, utilizing motor-driven vacuum leaf loaders, load the leaves and lawn debris into trucks and haul them away to private or public dumps. Being able to utilize this vast resource of organic material for soil enrichment would promulgate a major ecology advancement. Grinding or comminuting this collected mass of leaves and debris would make this advancement possible and practical.
Currently, commercial shredders and grinders such as those produced by The Roto-Hoe Company of Newbury, Ohio, and Amerind-MacKissic, Inc. of Parker Ford, Pennsylvania, are available for homeowner utilization. However, three major faults are inherent in most of these commercially available machines, namely: (1) manual introduction of the material to be ground; (2) resistance to grinding or comminuting of damp or wet material such as leaves; and (3) failure to grind to a particle size sufficiently small to permit the finally ground material to be mixed with the soil immediately after grinding.
Smaller pulverizing and lawn cleaning machinery are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,105,803; 2,590,734; 2,658,318; and 3,049,857 and some forms of these machines may have been utilized for leaf and debris pulverizing without achieving the desired performance and results of the present invention. Suction devices inducing the flow of lawn debris are disclosed in at least several of the aforementioned patents providing for the debris to be ground within a chamber before discharge.
It has been found advantageous to provide a grinder for leaves, twigs, and other lawn debris capable of being utilized by municipalities in larger models and for domestic use. Smaller models may be utilized for individual smaller home use permitting the redistribution of the pulverized leaves and finely comminuted debris for mixing into the soil and for use as mulch.
It is therefore an objective of this invention to provide a grinder or pulverizer for lawn and garden debris which will induce the flow of such debris into a chamber for pulverizing or comminuting and then discharging the comminuted or pulverized debris to either a collecting receptacle, bagging unit, or open pile.
Another objective of this invention is to provide a grinder for leaves, twigs and lawn and garden debris which will operate at high speed, grinding or comminuting the leaves or debris whether in a damp or wet condition as well as in a dry condition.
Another objective of this invention is to provide a grinder for leaves and lawn debris that will collect, comminute, and discharge the leaves and debris at a rate comparable to the collection rates of existing municipal leaf collection machines, and may be employed for use as a replacement for presently existing machines. It is anticipated that comminuted material utilizing the apparatus of this invention should increase truck load volume through increased density and render market value to collected leaves as an organic soil builder.
Another objective of this invention is to provide a grinder for leaves, twigs and lawn debris which is mobile and may be readily transportable from one location to another in which the grinder is provided with its own source of driving power preferably in the form of an internal combustion engine coupled to drive the pulverizing blades supported within a chamber while inducing a flow of air of sufficient volume and velocity to gather leaves, twigs and other garden or lawn debris through an appropriate connection to a chamber within which such materials may be ground and pulverized before discharge.
Other objectives and many of the attendant advantages of this invention will become more readily apparent to those having skill in the care of lawns and gardens and the collection of garden debris when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and detailed description of a preferred embodiment taken in connection with the appended claims which are not intended to be limited to the specific embodiment described and mechanical equivalents are contemplated.